If you’ve ever Googled a local business, you have probably seen a graph, indicating the average traffic (Popular Times) at a specific hour, during their normal business hours.
There is also a “Live” function, that shows how busy they are at that exact moment. How is that information updated in Google in real time? Does someone actually manually update this information regularly or is there some sort of algorithm that makes this determination?
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People with phones using Google Maps location services.
When you’ve got a smartphone with Google Maps on it Google can periodically check in on the location of the phone if more people happen to be at a certain location within a given time window Google can assume a location is busier. It’s also how the live function of it works. This is also partially how Google Maps can get some data on general traffic conditions.
Cause they’re always watching us via location/gps service. Same way the freeway turns “red” on Google maps when you approach a traffic jam.
Nope, your android phone is “phoning it in”. Part of all that boilerplate junk in the user agreement that you clicked on that noone reads is your phone is constantly sending google information like where you are, how fast you’re travelling.
So they know that android phones are x% of all phones. Lets say 70%. If on average there are 6 android phones are in this store, then they can extrapolate (assuming everyone has a cell phone) and say the average traffic is 10 people. Thus, if right now there are only 2 droid phones in here, there are maybe 3 total people, thus its “not busy”.
Same way how google maps redirects u around traffic – its collecting data from all the droid phones on the road and can tell when a bunch are moving a lot slower than the limit on a road.
This is a common feature used by Google or Waze for example that use your phone’s gps to tell how much people are at one spot
They track concentration of devices with Google Maps installed, just like they determine traffic by tracking devices with Google Maps. So many devices with that app installed it’s easy to model things like traffic and business busy-ness.
Hehe my neighborhood street was completely red on google maps at 1am the other night, said it would take 5 minutes to get from one end to the other.
I even know which house the slow driver lives at because that’s where the line goes from red to blue(skips yellow completely)
A lot of people have Android phones. The phones share their location with Google. Google’s computers can count the number of Android phones at any address. If the number is high, or there’s lots moving in and out, that place is busy. If there’s few and nobody coming or going, it’s not busy.
Youi now those Redbox DVD rental kiosks? Well there is actually a living breathing Google employee inside there with a clicker that keeps track of everyone coming in and out of the neighboring businesses.
In addition to what other people have said, Google also asks people. I have been on public transport recently and I got a notification asking me to rate how busy the train was at that time.
Get ready to have you mind blown. They track your phone. At all times. They observe WiFi and Bluetooth signals at all times as well. They use the GPS in the device to link the two so that even devices without GPS on can be tracked by seeing what access points are nearby.
Every Android phone, and every phone ever made to be clear, are being tracked. The Android ones give Google their data though.
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